sun

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Island Blog – I’m with them

The sun. I can see it determinedly shoving the mist oot, as we say here. It’s early, coffee, look out, listen. I hear the yip yip of a sea eagle (such a ridonculous call for such a massive bird) somewhere over there, across the sea-loch, in the hiding trees. The gulls and crows wheel and dive around this heretofore invisible massivo, like a mob shrieking at a government official who’s life choices are in doubt. This big bird, however, is just doing a landing and rest thing, no corruption in sight, although, to be honest, if you were low on the food chain, it could feel like corruption. I can’t see it. The Bird. The Yips flee out, oot, between a frickin tensity of trees, all leaves and “look at how wide I am” but that massive and wily expanse of feather, body oils, strength, all-seeing eyes that focus, with that control of the wind, that precision, those click-into-action claws, the curvature of that beak , this Bird sees everything. Everything.

It thinks me, the bird in the tree thing, the one who can see everything, is and who isn’t bothered by hecklers, ground huggers, life stuckers, whilst the sky screechers wheel around you, or me, the ones who may never catch the wind and rise into the clouds, the ones who jeer, who taunt, who peck and point and who, in their mob belief feel safe, belonging to the part of an ‘acceptable’ whole. For me, the one out there, believing, or trying to, their own truth, braving up on a wobbly branch, holding whilst the cawing and shrieking gets tired of itself, which it will, and yet still doubting and thirsty, sticking true to the self they hope they know they are.

I’m with them.

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.

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Island Blog – The Light

I have to see it. Light. In the dark days, I switch it on. I scurry among the mice in my cupboard under the stairs, to pull out twinkly winkly skeins of golden light. I weave the wires around pretty much everything that stands still long enough to allow this weaving frenzy. I plug in. To heck with batteries which tend to last about five minutes in the tall tell of time, dimming so fast as to become an apology. Light needs not such apology. Light is bright, she is sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and if I need to play pretend inside my home with a plug and a switch, then I will. Locals tell me that, when they walk by in the slipslide of a winter’s day as it moves into night, when the Winter King grabs tight hold of our earth and spikes ice into souls and water bodies, into nights and days, just loving the hold he has on us, and for months, the lights in my home spread like warmth and hope as they pass by.

I seek it, Light. The first dawn lift, lifts me out of bed as if someone had shot me from from a gun. I cannot remain inside those cosy covers for a minute longer. I must arise to say hallo to the newing light, the illumination of a garden, a life that still breathes, still lives itself. As the day slides off her perch, in the darkling time, I see others draw the curtains with a swish, turning in. I cannot do that. As long as there is light out there, I do no swishing. It is as if I am some strange creature, even I don’t know. I don’t say anything, of course not, as the dark comes in too soon with that swish, but I feel it ripple through me. I am all confused and suddenly required to conform. Well, I know that conform thing and who doesn’t? Parents, teachers, partners and so on. But I can feel a turmoil inside. I want to watch that light until it is entirely and completely gone. I have no interest in cutting it off. I’m probably weird, but I feel it, so strong, so sharp.

Once the natural light sink has sunk, I am woohoo about twinkly winkly lights and switches. The flames of my fire uplift me. I watch the flames, the way they wiggle and lift, the way the blue meets the red. I see it all. I could watch a fire for hours, the light and bright of it. I see a new moon, the ice blonde of her back curve, the slide of a plane heading somewhere, first white light, tampering into a catch of pink sundrift . And still the curtains are open. It thinks me.

If we really study light, out there, inside ourselves, in the eyes of a stranger, the power of light just might catch you too. Watch it, notice it, find it, hold it, don’t let it die. Light is life. Could be a new understanding, a new choice, a new direction. All exposed by light. Have a couple of thinks about it.

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

Last full day, today, under an African sun, and, although I am (always) sad to leave this beautiful country, I am ready to fly back through space and time, to land in my own country, my own life. Visits to Africa heal me, help me move forward in renewed hope, and also allow me, by some magic, to let go of whatever gave me ants in my pants during the year before. This time, I had some tough shit to go through, the legacy of which rippled on through my body and affected my mind in ways that surprised me. I was, I thought, quite in order with myself. Then, when I fell very ill, and cancer was discovered, I still felt in order with myself. I am strong, a warrior, I can overcome this, or so I thought, and, to a high degree and with the assistance of an excellent surgeon and tremendous medical support and expertise, I did, or we did. But the body holds the score, as we all know, so that, even when a mind is made up to survive and thence to thrive, the body lags behind. In turn, this lagging thing affects a mind, so that, although I had moved on, I was constantly reminded of a new frailty. And a new strength. It was confusing, as if a fight was on between body and mind. No matter how clear I was on my decision to move on after such a trauma, I was often reminded that a new compromise was required.

This visit, around family, under sun, inside adventures and conversations, I rise. Not by mental force alone, but with a gentling of body and mind, as if they now move together and as one. I said I knew myself before, but was still aware of anxieties and hesitations around my new limits. Now, I work with those limitations as if they aren’t limitations at all, but just who I am now. And I have learned from this change, this rather strange pretence that I can force a collusion between mind and body, regardless of trauma, as if it was nothing much and blow it away on the winds. That doesn’t work, I know it now, even if that determination has held me up and bright in 2024. What I needed was time to heal and the patience to accept that truth, to walk with it, open and humble, until all of me finally got together again.

We have had many wonderful adventures, all the while sharing ideas and jokes, plans and observations. We have watched the wild Atlantic and swum in the warm Indian Ocean. We have seen humpbacks breach, dolphins burst the waves wide open, colourful birds flying overhead; we have dined and wined and picnicked and walked through Fynbos, Fleis, and across miles of white sand ,peppered with an array of spectacular shells I never see back home. We have seen the sun set the ocean on fire, stayed with friends who live between mountains so high as to disappear into cloud. We have wandered among shops in Capetown, laughed at the terrible driving whenever it rains, and stood in awed silence beneath the upside down stars. And all the while, I could feel the gentle hand of a natural healing.

I know I fly back into winter, but there will always be a winter. I know I don’t have enough warm clothing. I know I will have to drive back to the ferry through tricky weather and that the ferry may not sail through gale force winds. I also know my wee home awaits me, the wood burner, the candles, my friends, my community. I return as me, but renewed, re-jigged, at peace with my life, because I have travelled in light, one that is strong and sustainable, one that tells me who I am, and who I am is just fine with me.

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Island Blog – The Silvermine

We went there today, early, for a picnic and swim. In 1665 someone reckoned there might be silver to be mined here. There wasn’t, but the river was dammed in order to check for it, and the dam is a big and glorious lake now. Many, very many, come here to swim and to enjoy a day by water in what is now a Natural Reserve. There can be baboons, there can be snakes, but with the shouts of delight and the ebullience of human voices, an encounter is a rare thing, thankfully.

We arrived with swim kit, dogs, food, a rug, a few towels and we found a space. The space was small and spiky grassed, but it was good enough. We had walked by many larger spots, already taken, even though we came early. We settled. Just behind us, on the slatted walkway, we heard others walk by, also looking for a place to land. You always hope for good neighbours, at this point if you come with two dogs, one a puppy. We found them, or they found us. They also had a pup, a curious but beautiful mix between a terrier and a something else with long legs. She barrelled into our midst, soaking and shaking, eyes bright and we laughed and said hallo. Then our resident pup did the same, only he has a much fluffier coat. I heard, through the big ass grasses, children squeal and chuckle as they cuddled him. That’s the thing about the Silvermine. Although we are all on the same shoreline, we are naturally divided, with these big ass grasses and they are so big ass, a total view block, some even taking out sky. And, yet, we can still, if we want, connect.

We swam, we played table tennis in the water, we watched the dogs swim, catch ball, and all the while the afternoon moved on, tick, tock, as more people came and as others left. I wondered how this place will be when the gates are locked, when the sun is gone and the night falls dark on the Fynbos.

Silver or not, we found it on this very happy day.

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Island Blog – A Thingummy Tree, and a Surprise

Another lovely warm morning, too hot, actually, to read my book in the full sun. I look to the Thingummy tree over there, all that dancing shade and the two pigeons coo-ing on a branch. David Bowie, I think, as I take in their colourful feathers, flagrant and sparkly bright, as most creatures are in Africa. They even coo musically, more the beginnings of a melody and not irritating at all. Beneath is grass trying to grow, elephant grass, tough and fat-leaved, but failing somewhat in the growing palaver. Mostly, I notice, there are ant mounds, wee ones, not termites, little tumps of sand with an air hole I am careful not to block with careless step. I consider what to lie on that close to the ground. I’m thinking snakes, beetles, all those other crawly things, none of which I mind as long as they don’t sting or bite me. I haul out a yoga mat, towel, pillow, book, glasses and the ever necessary water bottle, and lay down. All goes well for sometime, the shade most pleasant, the David Bowies hopping around me, the flying things remaining in the air. So far so good. I had just finished The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, a fabulous read, and, becoming completely captured by Marjam Kamali’s The Stationary Shop of Tehran, I failed to notice that something was crawling up my body. It, or she, had managed quite a distance over clothing, and it wasn’t till she arrived on my shoulder, and tickled, that I snapped my head around to look. It’s always wise to look before swatting in Africa.

The sun was almost blocked out and I kid you not. This insect is huge. 2 inches long, an inch deep, scaly and brightly striped, red and black. She was, I swear, as startled to see me as I was her and, I confess, I did swipe her off, apologising as she plumped to the ground beside me. She took a minute to gather herself and then, snail-slow, no hopping, she began to wander into the bushes. She is a female African Great Grasshopper, at least seven times larger than the male and spectacular to look at. Our encounter, albeit harmless, kind of put me off lying there like bait. I read the same page twice, darting looks over my shoulder and jumping at every tickle. Ridickerluss, I know, I know, but once the thinks think me, I am done for.

I had made a promise to myself on the yesterday, I remember, and when all my hearty thoughts rushed in like I knew I had to push them away and just go. I couldn’t take a bag, a house key, anything pinch worthy, particularly not on a Tuesday when dawn rises with a lot of noisy lid closing as many poor folks, knowing it is bin day, riffle through old rubbish to find whatever they can to eat, to sell, to repair, to make into something. Not a day to be leaving a bag on the beach, even if it is always in sight. Starving folk run fast. So, cozzy on, shorts and a sun top and the always bottle of water and off I set, marching down the road towards the Ocean. Skies scud skimpy clouds, the blue endless and white teeth flat welcomes and greetings from black and coloured faces. I met the fire service attemting to stem a burst water main, a massive burst of water arcing way over my head, and we joke about me getting soaked so ‘move quickquick Ma, Ayeee!’ The car guard who watches over parked vehicles wishes me a lovely swim, and on I go, ducking under the road, dodging piles of kelp, through the freshwater flow from the Flei (marshland) and onto the white hot sand. No more thinks are thinking me as I strip off and head for the waves. The water is warmly glorious, the waves lifting and lowering me, the salt delicious on my skin. I swim a length or two, then sit dripping myself dry in no time. I watch other swimmers, dogs in the water, children at play, and I smile.

I surprise myself sometimes, when the thinks don’t think me and I take action.

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Island Blog – Sun, Rain and I will Tomorrow

It may appear that, now I’m in Africa, I have less to say. Of course, it isn’t that, not at all, but more something to do with the sun, the beckoning, the light that opens up a day into a ‘let’s go’. It’s the same back home when the sun finds it in himself to show up at all, and we all respond, leaping into shorts despite the freezeback wind and the threaten of clouding somewhere over by. Kids want the beach, a picnic, play and more play, and thus everyone and anyone heads for the sea, or the river, or the pool if there is one in the vicinity. So, my musing will have it, sunshine and water are strongly linked. Very few will choose a cinema matinee or a visit to Great Aunt Granola in the nursing home. Not on a sunshine day. The film will show again, and she can wait a day or two as it is sure to rain tomorrow or the next, as it always does.

In Africa, rain is a blessing, and a challenge to drivers. I imagine it is also a challenge to those who live in townships, all those roofs fashioned from sheets of tin if you’re lucky, bits of tarp or bin bags if you’re not. But rain brings instant life to soil, fills water tanks, cools broiling bodies, eases tension. The drivers, as aforementioned, however, panic. Slippy roads stultify and confuse, it seems. Capetown, and other places, go slow, and I mean very slow, so that traffic convergence becomes traffic hesitation. Windscreen wipers swing like crazy and every other vehicle flashes emergency lights at any opportunity. It’s hilarious, unless you’re in a hurry, and a bizarre to me who knows rain in every state from slightly slippy road, through compromised vision to roadside puddles deep enough to sink my mini.

I walked again today down to the Indian Ocean. Sounds so majestic. She is warm and wild, her waves no hawking spit but rising above the horizon, backlit by sun, clutching kelp and shells in her grasp, to boom, and I mean BOOM onto the wide arc of white sand. She has a lot to say, and loudly. I felt it today as I read my book, the sonar wave shooting up the beach through me and knew I was connected, as we all are to all things, all the wild things we have, unfortunately forgotten in our rush for worldly gain. I watch dogs scuttle and dash in and out of the waves, their humans wandering besides. I see kite surfers fly above the crests, and canoeists paddle out to investigate rock formations. I hear children laughing as they tumble and shriek through the shallows.

My walk here takes me through an underpass, meaty with kelp-throw, a rush of freshwater strictured after big moon tides and very gloopy to navigate. Then I meet the ocean, flooding like she has a load of tongues, no two with the same sweep. One ankle deep, the next losing most of my legs to the swirl. I chuckle. My feet are safe, sand locked, my frock hem-soaked. I read a while, watch a train chortle by just above my head, wish I had brought my swimsuit. (is that what it’s called these days?)

I will tomorrow.

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Island Blog – Trailblazing

Anything that risks showing up whilst other things hold back for more clement weather have my deepest respect. They are showing courage and bravery, risk takers, future makers, trailblazers. ‘Anyone’ who does the same thinks me samely. I thrill to witness the braves. At times, I may have been such a brave, perhaps. As I ‘ink’ my thoughts, I long to cut the ribbon of correctness, and I do, but with caution, because the world is a heavy old judge and everyone listens to him, or her, or so it seems/seemed. I think of song lyrics, of poets, of writers who, in their time, were dismissed and banished, and, yet now we elevate them into an almost saintly status. What they took was a risk. What they said confronted the acceptable, particularly in the UK where class division appeared solid and impermeable and for generations over generations. I smile when I hear the echo of my past generation, sniggering at people from America, as it was called in my day, a country which had no class system and thought it laughable. Actually, most of us here did too, but we never had the brave to challenge the nonsense of it, and, perhaps, for it’s time, it had a place.

Today I met three bumble bees, always the first, these glorious and singular bumblers. They dip into the early blooms, thrumming with hopeful nectar, longing for pollination, and they will get it from these trailblazers. Barrel-bodied, humming like a C-130 Hercules, without a belly full of bombs, they swing crazy , bumping into me, into the window, but when they land on a primrose, a perfect gentle landing. I marvel.

I consider bumbling. With focus, without focus? It thinks me. The bees know nothing but focus. They rise from a dawn of frost and minus, and the minute Father Sun lifts his lazy butt out of bed, they fly. I think about focus. I am bumbling these after radiotherapy days, and may well do so for some weeks, but do I have focus? It’s an ugly word in my personal opinion, for such an important thing, and that thinks me more, because it seems that the speak of a word and the look of a word often don’t match at all.

I am bumbling. The radiotherapy is tireding and the zap map area, stings. I know that this will pass. I do what I need to do, want to do in the light of this new thing in my life. I rest, a lot. Sometimes i am in and out of bed for bits and pieces of the day so much that the concept of a day makes little sense, if any at all. I hoover, a bit, sort things, a bit, clean things, a bit and there’s another thing……what does ‘a bit’ tell me? Much.

It tells me that a bit is often more than enough. That rising through the frost of something is more than enough. That being one of those herculean bumble bees is exactly what I am. I buzz at that.

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Island Blog – The Flying Things

I had a dog today. Well, it’s better than a hissy fit or a conniption and certainly more rewarding. She is a black spaniel puppy, well trained and, for the first time, away from her human parents. She knows me, but that is so not the same thing as being left with me, not in her world. At first she was anxious, a lot of looking out of windows and eye-snapping me every time I moved from one room to another, a whole load of following and looking and those eyes were laden with doubt and insecurity. She is beautiful and soft and sweet and I reassured her a thousand times, creaking down on my hunkers to eye-level her, telling her ssshhhh, we’re ok, you’re safe and so on. I proffered toys, kept since my wee Poppy died, and for visiting dogs, and she rushed everywhere, with a pig, or a bird or a hedgehog or a something that has no name I know in her mouth, that spangle tail wagging like a metronome. We walked a little and she was keen to fly. I could feel that in my old legs, less under my own control than they were before. Before what, or when? I think since all this dying struggled me, and cancer too. That’s a something I flap away as if it was a mere cold, but obviously, my body is resulting. I doubt that is good grammar but, as you know I love to sideswipe the rules on that.

Around 1pm I was knackered and that thought me. She, the Spangle, asked nothing more than cuddles. She made no barks, chewed nothing, responded with cocked head, ears full forward whenever I spoke. I could have said Fancy a trip to Ibiza? and that tail would have told me Yes! However, I knew I needed to lie down. So we went upstairs and I did, inviting her onto the bed. She jumped and landed right on me, her paws either side of my face, her eyes staring right into mine. I looked back and she remained with that looking thing until I got the giggles, initiating a whole shenanigan of mischievous palaver, and I just knew rest was wrest from my grasp.

The sun was bright with a hail storm up his backside. We watched it, the hail, storm by, and then we walked again. We dillyed and dallied, endless sniffs abounding as the wind, latent, for now, still creaked the old trees. I switched back to hear their voices. You only speak in the wind, I said, and they creaked back, like old friends, like old memories. We are quiet in the calm, just like you, they said. It is only in troubling times that we need to speak out, much like you will do in your own troubled times, because nobody ever learns a damn thing when everything is easy. Yet, beyond the easy, In the after of an assault, when someone creaks and speaks from experience, there will be someone else who needs to hear, and who will catch the words.

And then, in my looking up, I saw the flying things. I haven’t seen them for many cold months. Insects in a whirl, a lift, coasting the sun warmth, a spin of hope. I watched them whilst the Spangle sat looking too, with no idea what she was seeing. But I did. I saw. And then we moved on.

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Island Blog – A Wonderful Thing

I’ve decided. I may have breast cancer and wotwot, but the knowledge has kicked my wobbly butt. I used to think that bereavement and loneliness was a fricking big deal not so long ago. Then I was Nearly Dead for a couple of weeks and now cancer is my new companion, offering a new perspective. It thinks me. How Life twist and tapselteeries us, what a tumbler, a flipdoodle, and once a simple human using a minute percentage of her huge brain has come to some sort of agreement with all this twisting, tumbling, flipdoodling thingy, there remains a think or two. So much of it all is way beyond my control, but there are snippets of life or self, over which I have complete control. So that is the country in which I have landed. It is new territory, for sure. I have sat on said wobbly butt for almost 3 years now and you can tell. I refuse to run anywhere for fear of setting off a landslide. Looking out at Life through windows is no way to live, even if the looker cannot see any side of Life to which he or she belongs any more. Once, she was this busy, rushing, active, caring woman and now, well now, she is a blob, a pointless one. It isn’t that she misses the man to whom she was married, because she doesn’t. He was wonderful and infuriating. He was everything to her and he drove her to distraction. He reached his Sell By date most timely. She was done with caring for him. And yet, and yet, his presence was something she thought she could live without and with ease and, in that, she was delusional. His company, his very self had merged with her own, dammit. She knows that now. It took that horsefly bite, that collapse into Nearly Deadness and the subsequent cancer Hallo, to sharpen her wits, to tell her that she is now her own purpose and that knowledge requires action.

So, I call the local swimming pool. Local! ha! It is 23 winding miles away, a real shlep and I do not like swimming pools, no thank you. However, my wobbly butt tells me it needs attention and not the unwanted sort. I, through 3 years of sitting on it, writing, sewing, hiding, reading, are done. I had to go for a chest Xray this morning and that takes me very close, dangerously so, to the damn swimming pool. So, I clear my throat and call. I speak to Nadia, delightful, and she tells me there are no lessons on a Friday. I explain, overly so, that I must build up muscle tone having lost it all somewhere, although I couldn’t tell her where. X ray complete, no metal, no, hold this, rest your chin, done, thanks Helen. The sun is warm, ditto the wind. Glorious. Well no excuse now. Damnit again. I arrive, book in, swim, hating the first two lengths and then, and then, I get into my stride. Instead of jerking and splashing and hating it, I begin to flow. Well, sort of. After I spend a while chatting with the girls at reception and we laugh and connect and now I have to go again next week because I said I would.

I swing my sassy mini out of the car park and drive home. My energy level is up. It hasn’t been anywhere near the Up thing for 3 years. I grab a mushroom omelet for lunch and decide to take the barky terrier (bored) to Calgary beach, ignoring the usual flaps about No Parking Spaces, or Meeting The Bus on That Tiny Road (especially on corners) and we are off! I feel wild again, my favourite feeling. No jumper required. Only a poo bag and a my phone for photos. The sky is as blue as my hair, the tide way out (Blue Moon) and it is lunchtime so the sands are almost empty. The bay is huge and we walk it, in and out of the warm saltwater. Geese fly overhead and I almost fall over watching them. Life. Life. Life abounds, and in me too.

Home again but still fizzing with NRG, I decide to wander to the shore to gather sloes for gin, even as I have no gin, yet. I balance cautiously, on the rickety rocks of the shore, and gather the beautiful blue berries. I hear seabirds, the rush of a changing tide, the laughter of children somewhere across the sealoch. I wander home as leaves fall around me. The faithful old trees are heading for a long sleep, and Autumn is in full and fine fettle holding up blue skies and clouds, stars, Lady Moon and Father Sun. The circle of Life circles on, as I move gently through memories and hurts and joys and promises of more to come. I don’t know what, of course, but just the knowing is a wonderful thing.